A reference guide to wine and food: look it up, and you'll remember it longer; screw it up, and you'll remember it forever.

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Monday, September 22, 2008

BOOK REVIEW: The No-Nonsense Guide to World Food (by Wayne Roberts)

THE NO-NONSENSE GUIDE TO WORLD FOOD (Between the Lines, 2008, 192 pages, ISBN 978-1-897071-44-1, $16 CAD soft covers) is by Wayne Roberts, a Toronto-based environmental activist who writes for NOW and co-ordinates the Toronto Food Policy Council (he's also the author of "Real Food for a Change" from 1999). It has been co-published with the New Internationalist as one of its "No-Nonsense" series, basic guides to activist projects albeit on a higher plane that Dummies or Idiots series. Other series topics include animal rights, climate change, fair trade, globalization, human rights, sexual diversity, women's rights, and world poverty. It's a great survey of the problems that plague global food production and distribution, all of it in the macros (since this is a survey book) of social justice, public health, and green economics. Of course, he brings in related systems with sustainable living, the role of governments, the hundreds of groups that have united (with stories behind these organizations). He deals effectively with the hunger campaigns in Cuba and Brazil. All we see in the papers, though, are stories about escalating food prices, high levels of obesity, and threats to food from global warming. He tries to go behind these stories to get at the issues by highlighting the post-World War II evolution of a cheap food system, the government subsidies, and the disconnect between humans and their environment. He has end notes after each chapter, lists of international contacts and websites, and an index.Audience and level of use: serious foodies, fans of Michael Pollan, etc.Some interesting or unusual facts: "Food production is one of the world's dirtiest industries, doing more damage to more territory than logging, mining or heavy industry. About 170 million food producers are child laborers, which speaks to the poverty and mistreatment subsidizing low food prices."The downside to this book: I wish Roberts had spent more space talking about Via Campesina. This really important group needed further exploring. Also, there is no mention of biodynamic or Demeter.The upside to this book: according to the publisher, "there are on-the-spot reports of heartwarming experiments around the world". And there are doable proposals. But still Quality/Price Rating: 94.